


Screams in Sanguine

by Tea_and_Nightmarescapes (Anxious_Trickster)



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Gore, Dissociation, Gen, Ghosts, Hints of Jane/Lisbon but not the focus, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Patrick Jane, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, mention of a psych ward, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 07:29:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19848424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anxious_Trickster/pseuds/Tea_and_Nightmarescapes
Summary: People are curious. They tend to take things at face value and don't bother looking deeper. When they look at Jane they see rumpled curls, a three piece suit, and a smile.They do not see the dead that flit about in the corner of his vision or the shaking of his hands.ORJane really is psychic.





	Screams in Sanguine

**Author's Note:**

> Be mindful of the tags.

“Are you really psychic?”

“There’s no such thing.”

Is he full of shit? The pendulum swings and it lands on ‘yes’. 

* * *

This is a trick.

People are curious. They tend to take things at face value and don't bother looking deeper. When they look at Jane they see rumpled curls, a three piece suit, and a smile.

They do not see the dead that flit about in the corner of his vision or the shaking of his hands. 

* * *

Cold reading, at its core, aims to sound insightful while saying a whole lot of nothing. And that is what Jane does. He turns from the dead and rambles a fiction. He spins inane rationalizations about the twitch of someone’s eyebrow or the scuff of their shoe. Ridiculous, but he is convincing. He is a con man, he is a cold reader, he is cold cold cold. 

He does not feel guilty about this. He lies to the only people he cares about because Jane used to deal in truths and came back broken.

Jane does not feel guilty (not over this), because how could Jane ever tell Lisbon? Strong, sweet Lisbon? Libson who still believes in justice, still believes in a God.

How could he imagine being so cruel as to tell Lisbon that the murders they solve are not the result of clever deductions and hair-brained guess-work, but from the victims themselves? Like the teenage girl with mutilations carved into her body as to match her corpse, screaming at him to catch her murder? Or the gardener with three bullet wounds in the stomach, shouting profanities at Rigsby he cannot hear?

* * *

This is a trick.

Because that’s the one thing he’s learned to do, the one thing he’s good at. That’s all Jane was for a very long time. Just someone to impress the crowd, bend the cards, shuffle them back and forth until you lose the Queen completely and no one wins the three-card monty. He adopted the role of husband and father too, for a while, but gambled those away with pride in the form of faulty trick dice.

* * *

He watches Kristina Frye talk at the empty air and feels a shimmering hatred. And a curiosity. He’ll admit that. 

* * *

There are some days in which the world feels painted on, like a set. And he wonders if the reason he sees the dead is because he is already one of them.

* * *

It would have all been too overwhelming, he knows. The ghosts would have turned his flesh blue from their coldness and his ears deaf from their pleads years ago, if not for one thing: their usefulness. 

He used them to get his Dad to ruffle his hair and tell him he loves him.

He used them to buy a nice house, and nice things for his wife and daughter. The ghosts couldn’t be overwhelming when he brings home a shiny new bike for Charlotte and gets to see his daughter’s face light up. 

He used them for the thrill of it.

He used them to use other people.

He is using them to hunt Red John.

* * *

Spirits are not kind. They do not give wisdom or look onto the living world with a fondness. Spirits are vengeful. They scream and they tear at the clothes of those who have yet to join them. When Patrick talks to them, it is not a conversation, it is not an exchange. He is a vessel for them to spit their vitrol to. They only tell him their hateful secrets, because he is the only one who will listen, who _can_ listen. He thinks that their hopeless anger is the only thing still tying them to this world. Sad, really. 

He likes to imagine that when the bastards and the murders finally meet their ends, the spirits will reap their pound of flesh.

And Patrick Jane, he is like the spirits. 

The company you keep, he supposes. 

* * *

Charlotte never does appear among the ranks of gray specters that flit about in between the shadows and the cracks. Everyday she doesn’t show is a day in which he closes his eyes and thanks the ground for taking her. Everyday.

* * *

Pay attention. 

This is a trick.

When he first meets Sheriff McAllister, he is immediately crowded by the deceased. He knows each of their names because he took great care as to memorize their faces and the patterns cut into their flesh. He sees Chris Worals, Amy Bennet, Allysa Morris, Racheal M’kay, Jessie Harrsion, as to name a few. 

Angela Ruskin Jane, as to name another.

“And who might you be?” Red John asks, as he extends his hand for Jane to shake. The crowd of people laugh, and cry, and moan, and curse, and do a thousand other things because there are so so many. There are so many, and they are _all_ going to help him. 

“Patrick Jane. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He shakes Red John’s hand and he smiles wide until his eyes crinkle at the corners. 

A week later, Thomas McAllister is found dead in his room.

* * *

The team suspects, of course. After Red John, Jane becomes so much more free and lost all at the same time. His shoulders relax from a tension he didn’t know he was holding, and his eyes lose the glint of wild desperation from before. He isn’t happy by any means, but he is content in a sense. A renewed hope at life and a loss of purpose are two powerful forces, especially when acting together on a single person. And that isn’t the type of thing that one doesn’t notice, especially not them. 

He reads their suspicions in Rigsby’s increased skittishness, Cho’s subtle jabs, Van Pelt’s long glances, and Lisbon’s special brand of frustration that hides a world of hurt underneath. Jane knows Libson will never forgive him. He has made his peace with that. 

He was planning on leaving after Red John, he really was. Not in the frantic desperate way that had gotten him locked up in that white room all those years ago; but quiet and melancholy, like a leaf drifting away on the breeze. Maybe a few choice incisions, maybe a carefully calculated dose of medication. He didn’t have a preference really, he knew better than to expect any dignity in death. A quickness would be nice, even if it was perhaps undeserving. 

The sun shines through the CBI blinds. The office is a quiet chatter as everyone goes about their business. The tea is nice in his blue _Fiestaware_ cup. Cho is on the phone ordering this week’s case closed pizza. There is beauty in the small things. 

So maybe he’ll stay. Just for a while. 

He smiles to himself. 

Lisbon spots him and halts on her way to the printer. 

“Oh god, I do _not_ want to know what that smile is about.”

There are so many things that smile is about, and he can tell none of them to her. So, he leans back and says, “Did you know that two thirds of ocean life still remains undiscovered?”

* * *

A shadow with no person attached stands in the center of the room, but he pays it no mind.

* * *

When Angela and Patrick were teenagers they used to sneak off to gaze at the stars. It became their little routine; to lay in the grass, surrounded by darkness except for the soft glow from the bright Ferris wheel.

Angela ashed her cigarette. She looked off into the carnival lights and asked, “How the hell are we going to get out of here?”

Jane gave her hand a light squeeze.

* * *

He likes to think that there will come a time, years from now, when the storm dies down. Jane never believed in a time like that, but maybe he’s starting to. Maybe it will be then that Jane will whisper into Teresa's ear, and describe to her the atrocities he’s seen. Watered down perhaps, but still the truth.

* * *

It was the step-mother. It was the policeman. It was _not_ the butler (it’s never the butler, they are unfortunately very well behaved). Rigsby’s mother is proud of him, Van Pelt once had a sister, Cho stabbed someone when he was young. 

How does he know this?

Well, that’s because he’s psychic of course.

**Author's Note:**

> Write the psychic Jane fic you want to see in the world.
> 
> Does anyone read The Mentalist fanfic anymore?


End file.
